In Defense of Detroit

Just throwing money at the Big Three will do absolutely nothing to solve this problem and only put off the inevitable. For the most part they produce a good product thanks to competition from the Japanese Automakers. The US manufacturers have are at a serious disadvantage from a cost standpoint. Until this is corrected no amount of money will solve the problem unless the Government holds a gun to our head and forces us to buy a vehicle from one of the Big Three. I have never heard of an industry that pays people for doing nothing. The reason why they don't make a lot of small fuel efficient vehicles is because they cannot make money on them, The UAW should have figured this out long ago. Corporate executives have certainly been overpaid for performance but the cost of their pay packages are still dwarfed by the costs related to contracts with the UAW over the years. The UAW would be wise not to kill the golden goose. Look at employees who retired from companies such as International Harvester who went Bankrupt. Ask them about their retirements and see if looking back they should have done whatever it took to keep the company in a healthy financial condition. Don't go throwing good money after bad. Make them come to the table with a plan that addresses the realy problem: Costs.

why do people always bring up spelling and grammar errors.Who cares , get rid of Unions bunch of problems solved. The big three quit pushing gas guzzling trucks, suv your cash cows! Americans realize less is more quit buying the 40,000.oo dollar car etc. I know I dont see them or think that person is better than me I laugh whos he trying to impress the bank that car owns you! dumb ass same with house Banks love you, home equity 2nd mortage all signs you r living in a dream world. Goto a couple estate sales thats all your crap sitting there except maybe 5 percent that your family or creditors took. And capital punshment for 4 those at the top that made bad choices screw wall street. I can buy older american trucks 4 500 600 bucks all day long cant touch a foreign truck 4 less 1500 reasonable same condition why is that cause they make a better vechile hands down.What they only make 15.00 hr wow so what so they dont own a fancy car whos happier or better does it matter? i could go on 4 ever When u die u die your stuff is divided up thats it u worked so hard 4 it 2 course im linda thinking buddism is the way to go especially if u dont like what the goverment is doing with your tax dollars (dont give them any) mystic

I make about $14 per hour and it infuriates me that taxes might be taken out of my check to pay for some walking-dead dinosaur company like GM and $73 per hour UAW workers. They refuse to make quality vehicles with good gas milage that are more affordable than the completion. They are just an international company like Honda in Ohio (Mexico plants, etc). When our kitchen puts too much salt and ruins a dish we don't pick out each grain -easier to wipe the slate clean and start over again without all the baggage. If they get a bail out, I want one too. Bailing out is moral hazard -it rewards bad decisions -look it up!

Have the big three actually proposed some changes, or are we just expected to throw money at them indefinitely?

I have work for GM and Toyota and now do some consulting for Ford.
We should NOT bail out these big 3 losers. We should let them go bust,
This will enable us to kill the UAW who are the root cause of the problem. They are nothing more than organized crime mafias.
STOP THE BAILOUT AND LET THEM SINK

How many automakers making how models do we need anyway? It's time to restrike the balance between corporate greed and corporate survival.
STOP THE BAILOUTS

Its sickening how the GOP gave total no-bid contracts to the halliburtons worth billions upon more billions
for the privatization of certain sectors involving war- security, transportation, food delivers services and so on!
These entities were services that the military could and should have done for themselvesfor a smaller monitary percentage comparied to private companies such as Halliburton- its called fleecing, bilking its fraud. The Bush and the GOP gave their blessing to this un-american way of doing business - privatizing the wealth yet they cant work out a plan to restructure reorganize and fix the American auto industry! The neocon plutocrats have burnt down ol glory and her greatness- all for greed and their ego driven policies! They should be going to prison- retirement is not good enough! And they can take the auto ceos/execs with them!
!

Let all the people who have been sucking the life out of the auto industry ( Unions, Top execs, towns etc) cough up the dough and save themselves.

The problem of BIG There is completely caused by their own doing, i.e.. Auto executives and UAW, accumulated over the past decades, not caused by the recent financial crisis. Therefore Auto industry has to fix their own mess and hope that t at least BIG TWO can survive. Otherwise, those guys will just keep the same status without making any improvement such that five years from now none of them will survive/

The problem of BIG There is completely caused by their own doing, i.e.. Auto executives and UAW, accumulated over the past decades, not caused by the recent financial crisis. Therefore Auto industry has to fix their own mess and hope that t at least BIG TWO can survive. Otherwise, those guys will just keep the same status without any making improvement such that five years from now none will survive.

If it weren't for the unholy union between the UAW and the Reaganites, Jimmie Carters plan for energy independance would have come to fruition by now.
Let GM pass on.

Every 'point' that the author makes gives me a stomach ache. The moment, I mean the very second Detroit didn't have to try to make a good car to make a profit they didn't. They decided to focus on SUV's and trucks. I remember the quote from the CEO of GM several years back when he was asked why they were shifting production to larger truck based vehicles. He said "this strategy worked for Ford so we are going to try it as well". Yet somehow the Japaneese manufacturers, and lately the Europeans, have successfully built cars IN AMERICA that are reliable, efficient, and PROFITABLE!

8 years ago I tried to buy an American made sports sedan. I looked at all of the Big 3's products. I waited in the lobby of a Cadiliac dealer for 40 minutes for someone to show me a car. Nobody even approached me. Now, I was in my early 30's so maybe they simply knew that I would never buy the STS but they never even came over to discuss the car. The Detroit manufacturers are broken. The ONLY way to fix these guys is to push them into bankruptcy and let a new set of people start over. Everyone is trying to say that if GM goes Chapter 11 that somehow the US auto industry will never recovery. BS. The same kind of crap was being stated when AT&T was broken up. The US telecommunication industry was never going to be able to compete again! The fact is that the telecommunications industry blossomed after AT&T was broken up. Maybe this will happen to the US auto industry too. Maybe not. But at least it will be forced to start behaving differently than it has for the last 15 years and that can only be a good thing

Now I konw why I no longer read Snoozeweek. Another 25 billion TAXPAYER dollars for what? Bloated union contracts? CEO pay? Cars that basically suck? Mismanagment? And you think govt can do any better! Get real or take your morning meds.